Uh, Media, Did Local McDonald’s Workers Really Walk Off Their Jobs Today?

In an online story updated at noon on KCTV-5, reporters Daniel Barnett and Stephanie Kayser assured the audience that today, February 12, “Employees at McDonald’s restaurants in the metro walked away from their jobs, protesting for a $15 minimum wage.”

The video report accompanying the article adds detail. The story is introduced by anchor Carolyn Long. Long repeats the idea that “fast food workers are walking out.” She tells us that us that this is part of a nationwide effort called the “Fight for 15.” Alas, she laments, “Not everyone supports their efforts.” Long then questions young Nathan Vickers in the field as to “how workers are trying to change those minds.”

The short answer is that they and their organizers are relying on generally clueless media to propagandize on their behalf without doing much in the way of fact checking. Vickers marches along with the alleged workers fronted by a banner reading, “United Against Racism, Good Jobs For All.” The organizers claim they are commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 1968 march on behalf of the Memphis garbage workers, essentially all of whom were black.

Why go on strike you can pretend to go on strike and get the media to believe you?

In Kansas City, most fast food workers are not black. Nor were most of the marchers black. A good percentage of them, in fact, appeared to be white and older, the sort of good hearted souls one might find at your local Universalist Unitarian church. These aging SJWs were carrying signs saying things like “will work for justice” and “Union Justice Now.” What this march has to do with “racism” is something of a mystery.

At the time of the march, this Sentinel reporter just happened to be ordering a large black decaf through the drive-in lane at the McDonald’s on Broadway in Kansas City. The workers at this McDonald’s are, for the most part, female Hispanic adults. These jobs matter to them. They do them well. I asked the cashier if she and her colleagues planned to walk out. She had no idea what I was talking about. I asked the woman who gave me my coffee the same question. She had no idea either.

These women are exactly the kind of workers the organizers allegedly represent. Yet no one appears to have told them about the walkout or the march. That did not stop KCTV-5 from reporting on the alleged walkout as though it were close to universal: “Employees at McDonald’s restaurants in the metro walked away from their jobs, protesting for a $15 minimum wage.”

Vickers closed his report by promising to share with KCTV’s evening audience his interview with a real McDonald’s worker, one who makes $11 an hour after 16 years on the job. In the Soviet Union they called this “agitprop”–agitation plus propaganda. Apparently, it still works.

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